Sandcastles
by That Kid's Lost
Summary: Rose and the Doctor visit the beach- in November. Shippy and somewhat fluff, but also angst. Oneshot. R&R,please! Rose, 10.2


|had this idea while drinking chocolate milk outside on my porch and listening to Coldplay- a few songs that inspired me were (Fix you), (Life in Technicolor), and (Yellow), in case you want the musical accompaniment. Very shippy, fluff but not to the point of boredrom, and I hope it makes you think! ;) 3 always, ThatKid.|

{Rose/10.2, rated K+}

"Rose!"

She was jolted awake by someone calling her name- in the early hours of the morning her brain was hardly functioning enough to recognize who it was, needless to say that there was, in fact, no need to panic. She leaped out of the bed, slipped on her boots and pulled her jacket from the closet, clunking loudly to the kitchen- but about halfway down the hall she ran face-first into a wall. Well, no, not a wall exactly, a man. She blinked at the faint light that reflected from his flashlight onto the pale marmalade walls and then noticed the cloud covered sky exposed by the skylight window. It was, she decided, probably two or three in the morning. And here was her Doctor, standing smiling in front of her, in dark jeans and a battered brown bomber jacket, holding a basket in one hand (closed, she noted, as if he was keeping whatever was inside a secret) and a thermos in the other. His wild brown hair fell in weird angles over his eyes in some places and stood nearly straight up in others, though he didn't seem to have noticed. Obviously they were in no immediate danger. "What is it?" she murmured, already turning to go back to sleep, but he stopped her with the hand holding the thermos, popping it open with a thumb to release the smell of tea.

"Morning." She took the thermos and faced him, sipping the tea before asking him, "Where exactly are we going?" His grin widened and he wiggled his eyebrows comically- "The beach."

"What? Why? What time is it?" He scoffed and took the liberty of stealing the thermos and closing it. "That, Rose, is three too many questions. If you'd get moving maybe I'd answer," he added, and she followed him out into the early morning- predawn, pre anything, even the birds were asleep, and waited for her answers as he placed the thermos of tea inside the basket and took her hand with his free one. Even now she was amazed at how easily their fingers found each other, how perfectly they laced. How effortless it was to be around him.

"Well, I don't think you need me to repeat myself, so there's the 'what?' gone… and I'm not telling you why… and since when has the time affected either of us?" She smiled but didn't answer. He was right. Time was nothing when she had him forever. "What exactly are we going to do at the beach?" she asked, and he blinked at her as if she had asked why the grass was green. "Why else would you go to the beach? To make sandcastles!"

It took her a moment for her to be sure she'd understood him, but when it registered she stopped and looked at him strangely.

"In November?"

"Why not?"

She had to hand it to him- there wasn't any reason she could think of 'why not', so they kept walking . The lonely little house they shared was on one of the sandy cliffs above the beach, so it was a short downhill scramble to reach their destination- before she knew it he had stopped her high up on the sand mounds and laid the basket gently on the ground. She watched him sit and begin to dig out the sand, finally realizing he was serious. He was building a sandcastle. At, what, three in the morning? In November? He might not be the Time-lord Doctor, but he was still crazy. Brilliantly, wonderfully crazy. She joined him and began work on her own castle.

It might have been ten minutes before she caught him looking over her shoulder, hands behind his back, watching intently as she added the final touches. She kept working, picking bits of shells and leaves and coral, weaving them into the design. She had long been a master at the art of sandcastle-building.

When she was finished she stood behind him and looked at his castle, then at hers, taking in the differences.

His was a fortress of sorts, large, sprawling, but strong, with a single wall that was two inches thick in most places, with holes at the bottom for drainage. The castle itself was tall and reinforced- square, with rounded edges, and a single tower that, at the tip, had a horseshoe crab's tail sticking up out of it like a spire. It was pretty in its' strength, but then you would have to look at hers. He did so, putting his hands in his pockets.

No walls supported the smaller structure, just a low, wide mound in front of the entrance. In the front she had used some sticks as what looked like columns, supporting the bark that was the base of the castle's overhanging roof. The sand of the roof itself was decorated with shells of any color, covering every inch of the top until you couldn't tell it had been sand at all. The walls on the sides were sand with glass shards as 'windows' and some bark for 'paneling', and then the back had been left as sand. There were three towers rising from the roof, and each was different- the first was the tallest, with coral bits added to it, the second was bare sand with a shard of glass at the top and no spire, and the third was mostly covered in leaves and shells.

He was silent for a moment, but then he spoke softly, almost sadly.

"It's so pretty," he whispered, "and it's so unprotected. What's going to happen to it when the tide rolls in?" He took his hands out of his pockets and once again her hand found his. "Shh," she replied, "Just watch."

As he had predicted, the tide did roll in. The wind came with it and whipped her hair away from her face, and she narrowed her eyes against it, watching the water. The Doctor watched her castle.

The waves lapped against the sand, hitting his wall hard and rolling back out. They hit her mound, too, but rolled over it to eat away at the castle, little by little. The tide only came to halfway up on their castles, then retreated, and the whole time they stood watching the castles and the waves, hand in hand.

When it was all said and done, his castle was dry but his walls were gone almost entirely (later he would state that they had 'served their purpose'), and her castle was a different structure entirely than it had been.

The waves had carved a smooth pattern into the castle, leaving the columns supporting the bark and the shells in place, but wearing down the castle so that it looked more like a maze- a maze that was impossible to get out of because none of it's chambers were connected. It had weathered, but it was beautiful even weathered the way it was- his was strong, but it was resistant to change, and it would dry out without the replenishing tide and would never be swept out to sea. Instead it would crumble to the ground and join the sand it had come from- it would stay. The parts of her castle that were gone were truly gone- the tide had moved them and they had scattered anywhere and everywhere on the beach, each grain of sand a vessel in a sea of others.

It was a metaphor of sorts.

She looked up at him and he blinked before smiling at her, but she could see in his eyes that he was thinking about the castle even as he helped her lay out the picnic blanket that was packed in the basket, and the biscuits, the now-cool bacon, and the thermos of tea.

She started eating and he just watched her for a moment- then he spoke, but his eyes were on the sea.

"I'm human," he stated, and she stopped chewing. He had stated the obvious in a sad, confused sort of way. Did he not know?

"Does that mean that I'm going to do…that…" he gestured at her castle, at the weathered-away bits, "…that I'm going to change so much?"

After a second she swallowed, realizing that for one of the first times since she had known him, the Doctor was really, truly scared. She moved close to him and lay her head on his shoulder, trying to help him, but she couldn't think of something to say right away.

Finally she could reply.

"Yes, that's what it means," she soothed, and, looking back up at him to catch his gaze, she concluded,

"That's our forever."


End file.
